Twelve happy months sped over the grey locks and closely shaven features of the Sawdust man. And the fifty-two days of congenial fellowship—so, poor man, he chose to consider it—compensated for the three hundred and thirteen other days upon which he sprinkled the yellow refuse among the unsympathetic feet of the market-men in the public-houses about Covent Garden. Pride, we are credibly informed, led to the overthrow of the Prince of Darkness; and Pride entering into the bosom of a new member of the Otway led to eventual decline and fall of that remarkable society. In an evil moment it was proposed at a meeting of the Committee that the Club-room should be carpeted! After a long and angry discussion the resolution was carried by a bare majority. The carpet was purchased, and the poor dealer in the waste of the saw-pits was dismissed for ever from the only Paradise of which he had any knowledge.
Not unchallenged, however, was the innovation. A few days after the dismissal of the weekly visitor, the following letter was received by the Secretary of the Club. It was duly affixed to the notice-board above the mantel-piece, where for some time it afforded the greatest amusement to the members, and was provocative of many facetiæ on the part of the chartered wags. But there were some of the older ornaments of the Otway, I think, who regarded the document with some misgiving, and counted it as an ill omen. Here is the text of the Awful Denunciation:—
“To the Otways.
“Pride comes before a fall.
“Beware! You are haughty now. You will soon be humble. My curse is upon you. For you have driven me forth into the world—alone. May your Club be overrun by outsiders. May money rule you instead of brains. May your skill fail you and your wit wither away. May you be abandoned by the pewter and the pipe. May your plays be damned, and your articles rejected. And aping your betters, may you become the laughing stock of the world. [Signed]
“The Sawdust Man.”
“There is insanity in Sawdust,” said Gadsby, after he had read the startling anathema.
“More drunk than mad, I expect,” suggested the charitable Tapham.
“Swallowed his own sack, perhaps,” added Ponsonby, in defence of the latter theory.
But old and judicious Otways shook their heads and sighed. The Sawdust man had become a part of their artistic career. His removal affected them. His curse depressed them beyond measure. On the morning after the receipt of the Curse, the members arriving at the Club found out in the upper panel of the door the word
Ichabod.
No one was ever able to ascertain when or how this amateur wood-carving had been accomplished. It was a mystery. But it led to this result. Senior members of the Otway entertained some fine old crusted superstitions, and after this handwriting on the door began to agitate for a removal to more commodious apartments. And now the curse began to work. For in order to keep up the more commodious rooms, and to pay for the increased service, there were necessitated two things. In the first place, an increased entrance fee and subscription, and in the second place, a certain healthy relaxing of the first rule of the Club, whereby all those who were not professionally connected with art, literature, or the drama, were rigorously excluded.
In two years from the date of the instalment of the Club in its more commodious chambers, the institution had grown marvellously in respectability, but it had lost its character, and was now a collection of individuals of the most various and most nondescript kind. And at the end of the last of those two years, a gentleman was elected to membership, who worked with the utmost good-will to efface what little traces of Bohemian beginnings still clung about the Otway. About this person or his antecedents little was known. He was immensely wealthy. He had suddenly acquired his money. And his qualification as a member of the Club was a work on Papua and New Guinea, which had been eagerly welcomed by the learned societies, had been solemnly reviewed by the Quarterly, and which was known by several to be the work, not of the new member at all, but of a Museum hack named Geyser, who for a consideration in hard cash, permitted Mr. Thistleton—that was the new member’s name—to figure on the title. Appended to his name were the letters F.R.G.S., and other formidable distinctions which it may be presumed, can also be obtained by the common commercial operation known as exchange and barter.